The Hmar people of the Barak valley: a community between borders and dialects

The Hmar people live across Manipur, Mizoram and Assam — a community divided by state borders but joined by a language that is itself in the making.

Writers and scholars are now standardising a written Hmar, drawing the dialects together for school textbooks and a literary revival.

The project is cultural first, political only by implication: ‘If our language survives, so do we.’